In January 2013, I started Tom Alrich’s Blog on Blogspot (a platform owned by Google). Between then and last summer, I published over 1200 posts and found a lot of readers. While I was happy with Blogspot, I finally came to realize last year that Substack offers a lot of advantages over almost any other platform. I imported all of my existing posts into Substack (under the very creative name of Tom Alrich’s Blog, too) and started putting up all new posts there. However, I never took down my Blogspot blog, even though it no longer carried my new posts.
While this had nothing to do with my leaving Blogspot, ten years ago I first noticed that my Blogspot blog was getting occasional huge spikes in hits. Normally, that would be good news, except for one thing: The increased hits (called pageviews in Blogspot) weren't for new posts but for old ones going back years. And instead of being concentrated on a few all-time favorite posts, these increased hits seemed to be spread across all my old posts, regardless of whether I considered them important or not. Obviously, someone or something was going through my posts one-by-one and reading each one. And that person or thing told a lot of their friends about the blog, so they all followed suit.
I didn't know what to make of this phenomenon. I asked by readers if they knew, but I got no response, so I just filed it away as a curiosity. However, these unexplained hits continued to grow. More importantly, they spread to other countries, such as Singapore and Hong Kong - to the point where four or five years ago I had more hits in one year from Singapore than I did from the US. This wouldn't itself be strange, were it not that until about 2020, my posts were mostly about the NERC CIP cybersecurity standards for the North American electric power industry (that's still my number one topic, although vulnerability management is a close number two nowadays). I never realized there's a huge body of NERC CIP affandicios hiding out in Singapore. Who would have known? 😊
Two or three years ago, the reason for these hits became clear: My blog is being heavily used for AI training, not because I'm a brilliant individual but because I'm almost the only independent source of information on NERC CIP, other than the "official" channels of NERC and the NERC Regional Entities. I've confirmed this myself, since sometimes responses to questions about CIP that I raise in ChatGPT or Google AI reference one of my posts (always in Blogspot, of course).
Since then, my total pageviews on Blogspot have continued to rise, even though last August I set up my new blog on Substack and stopped putting up new posts on Blogspot (I also put up all my new posts in Energy Central and put up a link to them on LinkedIn. I’ve been doing that for more than a decade).
Meanwhile, my Blogspot pageviews have grown at a literally exponential rate, even though the last new post I put up there was in November. Last year, I think I averaged about 15-25,000 pageviews per month (which I thought then was a lot). But this year they really took off. In May 2026 I had 274,000 pageviews, and in June (i.e., this past month) I had over 670,000 pageviews – in Blogspot alone. If this trajectory had continued, I would probably have received a million pageviews per month by the end of the summer. Yet I have never received a single email or comment on one of my Blogspot posts since I stopped putting up new posts there. It doesn’t seem that the bots reading my posts have any questions about them. I wonder why.
I wasn’t happy about this, and why should I be? It’s clear that my Blogspot blog has become nothing but a free resource for AI training. So I took down that blog just now, after posting a warning that I would do this about a month ago (not a single bot complained, or even sent me a going away card).
Anyone who wants to access any of my old posts (i.e., all posts over three months old, whether they were originally in Blogspot or Substack), is welcome to read them to their heart’s content in Substack. AI training bots are also welcome to read them – although I freely admit that I consider bots to be inferior to humans (after all, Thomas Jefferson said “All men - and we now add ‘women’, of course - are created equal.” As far as I know, he never mentioned AI bots, or any bots for that matter).
Of course, anyone who just wants to see my posts that are less than 90 days old is welcome to sign up for a free subscription. But anyone who wants to read my old posts – human or otherwise – has to pay a subscription fee of $30 per year. However, if someone wants access to my old posts yet can’t afford $30, I’ll be glad to give them a complementary one year subscription if they just email me. But people with OpenAI or Anthropic email addresses need not apply. I figure they can afford $30.
Tom Alrich’s Blog, too is a reader-supported publication. You can view new posts for two months after they come out by becoming a free subscriber. You can also access all of my 1300 existing posts dating back to 2013, as well as support my work, by becoming a paid subscriber for $30 for one year (and if you feel so inclined, you can donate more than that or become a founding subscriber for $100). Whether free or paid, please subscribe.
If you would like to comment on what you have read here, I would love to hear from you. Please comment in my chat or email me at [email protected].